Canada's Rocky Mountaineer is touted as one of the top five rail experiences in the world. Sean Flaherty hopped on board.
Long train journeys can be the best of times, and they can be the worst of times.
For example, I once got the overnight train between Mexico City and Oaxaxa expecting nothing but pain in a cramped second-class carriage, but had the time of my life after I got drinking with a group of waiters who dragged me along to a three-day wedding.
At the other extreme was the nine-hour Southerner journey from Christchurch to Invercargill, attempted completely sober. I'm not saying it was boring but if they'd been handing out revolvers anywhere south of Gore there would have been a stampede.
So how would the two-day Rocky Mountaineer First Passage to the West (Vancouver to Banff) through the scenic wonderland of British Columbia rank?
Considering it was a $C2189 ($NZ2704) trip and I was being hosted for free in the double-decker super-luxury Goldleaf carriage, you would assume pretty darn high, right?
Vancouver rocks
If you're going straight from New Zealand to hop on the train it's a good idea to go a couple of days early or the jet-lag will kill you. You won't regret it.
Vancouver's big and buzzing with life and so eco-friendly you're pretty much saving the planet just by being there.
Everywhere you look there's cool stuff like plug-in stations for electric cars, low emission sky trains driven by robots and intelligently designed cycle lanes; and weird stuff like trees growing out of the top of high-rises and the virtual criminalisation of smoking. It's like travelling into some parallel future where the Greens are taken seriously. If that doesn't grab you there's top-class shopping and eating and great bars and mountain views.
Crossing picket lines sucks
We were warned in a letter that we may encounter industrial action and on the first morning were told we'd be crossing a picket line to get to the station.
Bussing through those people holding placards was one of the least comfortable experiences of my life. I wish I could say I had the courage of my working-class convictions and jumped off the bus but, of course, I didn't. If this is going to be a problem for your conscience make sure you read up on the dispute so you can come to an informed decision.
It's the seniors tour
The official line is that the train's key customers are aged 45-plus but that's a little on the low side. When we arrived at the station I thought there'd been a jailbreak from the nearest active retirement community.
This is a good thing. Oldsters are ideal travelling companions on a train, and not only because you can always outpace them in a dash to the emergency exits. On this trip they were mainly retired Canadians on a bucket-list gig, which meant they were determined to enjoy every minute and their wholehearted good cheer was infectious. They lapped up the scenery, lapped back the wine and tossed around the wisecracks.
There's something about trains
Nothing quite says I'm on a journey like the movement and sounds of a train. Creak, squeak, rattle, groan. Here we go. It's the adult equivalent of being rocked on your mama's hip. Ambling through the outskirts of Vancouver was supercool.
Train-pace is just the right speed to get the feel of a place and the overwhelming vibe was full-bore activity. If there's a global economic crisis, it's news to the Canadians. Everywhere you look crews of guys in hi-vis and hard hats are digging huge holes or riveting together enormous steel structures.
While New Zealand feels like it's retrenching, here the frontier is being expanded right in front of your eyes.
The wood for the trees
It's estimated there are a trillion trees in the world and by lunchtime on the first day I'd seen about half of them. Once you get out of the city this is seriously big country. You could drop the South Island into British Columbia and never find it again. The train went for about 12 or 13 hours on the first day and that's an inch on the map. So the scenery's grand and all - think Central Otago and the Lakes District (with lots more trees) - but it doesn't change in a hell of a hurry. You have no choice but to succumb.
You sit back in your luxury rocking chair and watch it slowly slide past and talk about how relaxing your vacation is.
Food glorious food
A big attraction of the train is the food and wine, and in Goldleaf it was indeed first class.
There's something deeply satisfying about tucking into gourmet salmon while sitting in the window seat of the restaurant with possibly the best view on the planet. At the very least you can be sure that nobody you know is living quite so luxuriously and that's a victory in itself. How's the home-made ham sandwiches in the Octagon going down buddy?
Because I'm rattling through the Rockies eating incredible food prepared by a top-class chef - and I just saw a grizzly bear!
Bear essentials
That's true about the grizzly.
We'd been promised bears and the media officer was nervous because a mean Aussie journo had written a story headlined "Where are all the bears?"
But on the second day we indeed saw a skinny baby grizzly bear in the forest beside the tracks. The thing looked famished and frozen and was doing what bears do in the woods at the exact moment we rattled past but it was undeniably exciting nevertheless to be so close to a savage wild beast. We also saw a couple of brown bears, four or five elk, a few deer, some marmot, a bald eagle and a beaver lodge. There's no arguing with that scorecard.
Going to places such as Canada always reminds you that New Zealand is long overdue a national debate on just how rubbish our wildlife is.
Slow but sure
Despite its iconic status, the Rocky Mountaineer has to work in with the freight trains on Canada's thriving rail network, so, at times, the train slows to almost a halt, and at other times it stops altogether. Near the end of the first day, there was much hilarity when we got passed by a man on a push-bike. On the second day the trip was interrupted by several long stops.
I got chatting to a man from Ontario who grumbled that "We've done a lot of waiting today. About two hours. They didn't advertise that part".
He had a point. There's not much they can do about it but if I was a paying customer I would have expected more communication about how long we were stopping and when we'd get going again.
The pay-off
It's tough to sell scenery to a South Islander, but once we hit the Canadian Rockies I realised the Remarkables might just be overstating their case a bit. This was some pay-off. Mountain after majestic craggy mountain. There was just no arguing with their magnificence. We wound upwards through the famed spiral tunnels that a previous generation of hard hats had blasted through the rock to overcome what was thought an impossible gradient for a train.
The sun came out on the snow-topped peaks. All you could do was stare in wonder. We emerged on the other side and chugged towards the station at Banff feeling we'd just experienced something quite special - a Rocky mountain high.
At a glance
• Sean Flaherty travelled on the two-day First Passage to the West (Vancouver to Banff).
• The Goldleaf price of $C2189 ($NZ2704) includes stays in top-class hotels in Vancouver, Kamloops (a bigger Alexandra) and Banff (a classier Queenstown) and your bags are delivered to your room. The train also offers a less expensive Silverleaf and a budget Redleaf service (the scenery's the same but the windows to view it are smaller). For details on what you get for your money go to rockymountaineer.com
• Air New Zealand flies direct to Vancouver from Auckland three times a week. Return economy fares start at $2000 and premium economy is $4000.
• Top tip: Be careful of the Canadian equivalent of GST. It's added at the till so that $25 T-shirt will cost you $28.
• Sean Flaherty travelled to Vancouver courtesy of Air New Zealand and Rocky Mountaineer.
